n. planetarium consisting of an apparatus that illustrates the relative positions and motions of bodies in the solar system by rotation and revolution of balls moved by wheelwork; sometimes incorporated in a clock

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

After Charles Boyle, Fourth Earl of Orrery (1676-1731), for whom one was made.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Named after Charles Boyle, 4th Earl of Orrery (1676-1731), for whom such a device was made.

Examples

Other beginning words, such as orrery, posset and mornay, also defeated spellers.

In contrast with the orrery by which we might symbolise the structural integrity so crucial to Rationalism in its aesthetic of the logical, the thunderbolt signifies the dynamism of the ruptures at the heart of all strange fiction (in which I include not just the fantastic but the tragic and the comic.)

To see them in the twisting wires of the canopy and to discover these forces was like looking at an orrery, a model of the solar system, and my nest-star joined these others in their universe, and I could feel the suck of their atmospheres as we passed beneath them through the wood.

Wordmap

Word visualization

Comments

One of the great stories that involves this word involved Sir Issac Newton. He had such a device, and an atheist scientist asked him who had built such a wondrous device. Newton responded pointedly, "No-one."

"... an astronomical machine, for representing the motions and appearances of the heavenly bodies; and hence often called Planetarium, which article see.

"The reason of the name Orrery is as follows:—Mr. Rowley, a mathematical instrument maker, having got one from Mr. George Graham, the original inventor, to be sent on board a ship, with some of his own instruments, he copied it, and made the first for the Earl of Orrery; Sir Richard Steel, who knew nothing of Mr. Graham's Invention, thinking to do justice to the first encourager, as well as to the inventor of such a curious instrument, called it an Orrery, and gave Rowley the praise which was due to Mr. Graham. See Desagulier's Experim. Philos. vol I. p. 430."